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Podcasting: The Voice of Storytelling
Each year, Bush Upper School students engage in Cascades, a three-week immersive experience where they can explore in-depth subjects and opportunities that fall outside of a “traditional” classroom and curriculum. Born out of The Bush School’s long history with prioritizing experiential learning, the Cascades courses range from international and domestic trips to local internships and classes that focus on gardening, cooking, board game making, and much more. This year, we followed along with Upper School History teacher Paula Dowtin and Upper School French teacher Mark Leuning’s Podcasting Cascade as their students went from learning the structure of storytelling to creating their own podcasts to submit to NPR’s 2024 Student Podcast Challenge.
Day Five: Research and Generating Ideas
The early portion of the Podcasting Cascade focused on the art of storytelling – generating ideas, ledes, and outlines for the students’ podcasts. Large notepapers with the students’ initial ideas dotted the classroom, with notes on stories on grade inflation, food and culture, and the French resistance in World War II, to name a few. That morning, the class had been visited by KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media team to learn how they put together podcasts for the Seattle community. KUOW is a local Seattle radio station and NPR affiliate. In teams or individually, the students spent the afternoon planning interviews, writing introductions, and honing their scripts in preparation for recording later that week.
Day Eight: Visiting the KUOW Station
Having been visited by KUOW’s youth producers earlier in the week, the class traveled to the KUOW studio in the University District to learn more about the ins and outs of professional podcasting and radio production. During the tour of the facilities, students heard from editors, community outreach specialists, and radio producers about the different aspects of their jobs and how they support the greater KUOW mission. Some students also got the chance to briefly record in one of the podcast studios and try out the professional equipment.
Day Thirteen: Exhibition of Learning
For the final day of Cascades, the Upper School gathered together to present to each other about their respective Cascades courses. The Podcasting Cascade hosts a listening party for the students at each of its sessions.
Nathan G. ‘24 ‘s podcast What’s In A Grade? Starts with the joyful tones of a Bush Kindergarten class, later juxtaposed with the pressure to get good grades he currently perceives in the Upper School. He interviewed Bush’s Head of College Counseling Melissa Lanctot, who told him Bush is not immune to the trends of grade inflation over her sixteen-year career here. Nathan offered an alternative to letter grades by using Upper School Math Teacher Tom Bergeron’s standards based grading system as a counter example.
In Savoring Diversity With Pride, Ahlam A. ‘26, Edom A. ‘26 and Ligaya S. ‘26 collaborated to explore the intersection of food, culture, and tolerance. The podcast starts with Ahlam and Edom remembering times they felt singled out for the Ethiopian food they brought to school, then turns to a celebration of food and memory and its ability to educate and bring people together.
“Growing up, I distanced myself from my culture, but as I matured, I realized that it’s better to be my authentic self,” Ahlam said.
Ligaya’s grandmother, one of the interviewees, closes with this thought.
“Just as important as introducing our culture to a diverse world, it’s equally important to learn about the other cultures of other countries to help us better understand each other.”
What were once beginnings of ideas have become fully realized stories. Through a combination of expert and personal interviews, tight scripts, and accompanying music, the podcasts have turned into slick productions over the course of three weeks, ready to be submitted to NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge.
“It’s exciting to see students start completely from scratch, learn the ropes of podcasting, and gradually move toward a completed, high-quality project—in a relatively short amount of time—creating work that reflects their personal interests and passions,” Mark said.
-by Colin Murray, Communications Manager
The Bush School is an independent, coeducational day school located in Seattle, WA enrolling 715 students in grades K–12. The mission of The Bush School is to spark in students of diverse backgrounds and talents a passion for learning, accomplishment, and contribution to their communities.
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